The wealthy do not and never will send their children to an online university. Funny how no one ever mentions that.

I know semi-upper-middle-class people who are spending $80K per year to keep their kids in relatively elite private universities. Right now, an underlying premise is that their investment will somehow return value. And well it might. But these are extremely risky investments, for a number of reasons.

Among these reasons: one can imagine that the returns on investments of this type might be decreasingly measurable in monetary terms: If your kid studies medical-micro-bio but ends up an organic pear farmer on the Sacramento River out of conviction, what do you say? The choice might be rational, not so much because there are no opportunities, but because the opportunities aren't immediately commensurate with the new graduate's senses of adventure/exploration, competence, or social justice. What then?

(An aside: I used to know someone who administered a granting program to Sudanese university students, run by the government of Sudan. She was responsible for keeping tabs on the students. All rich kids. THEY would commonly come to the US but enroll in only online courses. Sort of a blended-learning model....;)